Power Stack Control Systems are used to control the generation of AC power from a DC or AC input voltage. Modern Power Stack Control Systems incorporate one or more transistors, for example an insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT). An IGBT is a three-terminal power semiconductor device primarily that forms an electronic switch for combining high efficiency and fast switching in electric devices. Power Stack Control System 100 as known in the prior art is depicted in FIG. 1 and includes an IGBT interface board (108) connected to an IGBT Driver Board (112) via connection 110, a Master Control Unit Board (104), a Host CPU board (not shown) connected to Master Control Unit Board (104) via connection 102, and IGBT (116) connected to IGBT Driver Board (112) via connection 114. The IGBT interface board (108), IGBT Driver Board (112) and IGBT (116, with DC input 118 and AC output 120) are also referred to as the Power Stacks (108, 112, 116).
Known Power Stacks (108, 112, 116) are currently driven by a Master Control Unit (104) which is usually a standalone embedded control board. Typical Master Control Units (104) currently use a parallel interface (106) via a ribbon cable which enables direct control of the IGBT Interface boards (108) which interface directly to the IGBT driver boards (112). Both the IGBT Interface (108) and Driver boards (112) are individual components of the power stack.
There are a few problems with the existing parallel interface (106) scheme as implemented on the ribbon cable:
1. The power and grounds supplied on the cable do not adequately support the power and grounding requirements of the IGBT Interface and Driver boards (108, 112).
2. The digital logic level implemented on the parallel interface (106) is not an industry standard which complicates the application interface to digital logic components on the Interface Board (108).
3. Due to the limited number of pins on the parallel interface (106) it is not possible to provide adequate status/error information back to the Master Control Unit (104).
4. The existing interface does not support control of multiple IGBT Interface boards (108) or multiple power stacks in general (108, 112, 116).
5. The existing interface does not support the concept of a global clock which can be used to control timing between the Master Control Unit and the Power Stack (108, 112, 116) with a high degree of precision.
Thus, there is a need for new Power Stack Control Systems that addresses these problems. The invention is directed to these and other important needs.